#301 (8/25) - Items for Prayer From the Past Week

[FYI - My GENday is Sept.19th. When is YOURS?]

Hurricane Isaac Threatens to Swamp Republican Convention,, August 22(Source: ABC News, National Weather Service)

Hurricane Isaac, currently a tropical storm brewing southeast of Puerto Rico, is on track to hit Florida the same day that Mitt Romney and 50,000 Republican delegates, journalists, protestors and guests descend on Tampa for the Republican National Convention. While it is too early to accurately predict the storm’s path, ABC meteorologist Max Golembo said it will hit southern Florida. Whether it will skim the east coast near Miami or crash head-on into Tampa, is still up in the air.

As the Lord leads, please pray: •About the path of Hurricane Isaac and the havoc it can create all along its progression.
•For the organizers and attenders of the Republican Convention, their safety, and the logistics of planning an alternate convention time if the need arises.
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Risk of Double-Dip Recession Rises in U.S., August 22

The odds the United States will slip back into recession next year have risen, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said, citing risks from the European debt crisis and budget tightening at year-end. The US ratings firm raised the chance of the US falling into recession to 25 percent, up from a 20 percent chance estimated in February, as the world’s largest economy struggles to recover from a severe 2008-2009 slump.

It also pointed to the looming possibility of the government being forced by existing law to severely cut spending and increase taxes on January 1, the so-called fiscal cliff that would crunch the economy.

"Economic activity has downshifted sharply from earlier this year," S&P said in a report on North American credit conditions amid global uncertainty, dated August 20.
"At the same time, possible contagion from the European debt crisis, the potential so-called ’fiscal cliff’, and the risk of a hard landing for China’s economy have added greater uncertainty to US economic prospects," it said.(Source: American Foreign Press, Wall Street Journal)

As the Lord leads, please pray:
•About the national and international economic downward trends and what can be done to reverse them.
•About the impact on American family budgets if the economy takes another recessionary dip.
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Two U.S. Special Ops Troops Killed by Afghan Soldier in Training, August 17

Two American soldiers were part of a U.S. special operations team tasked with training local Afghan military and police forces in Farah province in Western Afghanistan, were killed by an Afghan recruit only moments after he had been handed a weapon...Including Friday’s shootings in Farah province, 11 American soldiers have been killed by Afghan forces in what the Pentagon is now calling "insider attacks" over the past two weeks... The Pentagon is planning to ramp up counterintelligence operations to ferret out insurgents or sympathizers who might have infiltrated the ranks of American, NATO and Afghan forces.(Sources: The Hill, New York Times)

As the Lord leads, please pray:
•About the need for trust between U.S. and NATO forces and the Afghan nationals being trained to take over security.
•For efforts to ferret out the insurgents and those intent on betrayal.
•For the families of our military men and women being lost to these attacks.
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Pakistani Christians, Fearing Backlash, Flee Community after Girl Accused of Blasphemy, August 20

Everyone in the teeming, tense community of Muslims and Christians just outside Islamabad seems to have a different story about the young girl and the Koran.

The 12-year-old Christian deliberately burned the Muslim holy book, some say. No, she innocently put pages from a non-sacred teaching text into the trash, say others, and nothing was burned. Still another version holds that an older Muslim boy planted pages of the Koran for the cleaning girl to find, and leveled the accusation of desecration because she had spurned him. Amid the conflicting claims, this much is certain: As many as 600 Christians have fled their colony bordering the capital, fearing for their lives, officials said, after a mob last week called for the child to be burned to death as a blasphemer.

The girl, whom authorities have described as having Down syndrome, now sits in jail in Rawalpindi, charged by police with blasphemy, while her family has been put in federal protective custody.

Under Pakistani law, those found guilty of defaming the Islamic prophet Muhammad face the death penalty, while defiling the Koran can bring a life sentence. The case of the girl is the fourth in recent months to alarm human rights advocates, who say the law is frequently used to persecute Christians and also has been unfairly applied to the mentally ill - including some Muslims.
(Source: Washington Post, Reuters, Associated Press, Fox News)

As the Lord leads, please pray:
•For Christians in Pakistan who fear persecution.
•For the young girl in protective custody and her family,that they might be strong in the face of potential mob violence from their Muslim neighbors.